FOR PROFESSORS

RIGHTS INFORMATION

Please note: UC Press e-books must be purchased separately from our print books, and require the use of Adobe Digital Editions. If you do not already have Adobe Digital Editions installed on your computer, please download and install the software. To complete your e-book order, please click on the e-book checkout button. A charge will appear on your credit card from Ingram Digital Group.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, global labor migration, trade, and overseas study brought China and the United States into close contact, leading to new cross-cultural encounters that brought mixed-race families into being. Yet the stories of these families remain largely unknown. How did interracial families negotiate their identities within these societies when mixed-race marriage was taboo and “Eurasian” often a derisive term?

In Eurasian, Emma Jinhua Teng compares Chinese-Western mixed-race families in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, examining both the range of ideas that shaped the formation of Eurasian identities in these diverse contexts and the claims set forth by individual Eurasians concerning their own identities. Teng argues that Eurasians were not universally marginalized during this era, as is often asserted. Rather, Eurasians often found themselves facing contradictions between exclusionary and inclusive ideologies of race and nationality, and between overt racism and more subtle forms of prejudice that were counterbalanced by partial acceptance and privilege.

By tracing the stories of mixed and transnational families during an earlier era of globalization, Eurasian also demonstrates to students, faculty, scholars, and researchers how changes in interracial ideology have allowed the descendants of some of these families to reclaim their dual heritage with pride.

“Beautifully written and thoughtfully crafted, Teng’s Eurasian is a pleasure to read. The author has written a nuanced, multisited account of mixed families and Eurasian identities that will be important reading for students in U.S. and Chinese history and in Asian, Asian American, and Ethnic Studies. The author tells these wonderful life stories and adeptly uses them to track larger historical processes and phenomena.” —Kornel Chang, author of Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands

"By examining Eurasian identities from Chinese and American perspectives, Emma Teng offers a truly transnational and multicultural intellectual project that few works which appear to be such can actually claim, for she uses with facility and depth materials in English and Chinese, and goes beyond the obvious duality of American/British on the one hand, and Chinese on the other, to introduce a third element, that of the Asian American, examining not just the distinct viewpoints separately, but, more interestingly, the intersections between and among them." —Evelyn Hu-DeHart, editor of Across the Pacific: Asian Americans and Globalization

"Emma Teng’s rich and compelling narrative captures within one elegant volume a profoundly complex story about diaspora, citizenship, empire, nation, taxonomy, identity, capital, race, labor, class, gender, intimacy, and the body, all the while avoiding the twin pitfalls of transnational abstraction and dislocated particulars that threaten any work of such scope and ambition. It is an analysis of the highest quality, delivering an argument that is empathetic, but which not for a moment relaxes either the critical tension between the author and her subject, nor attempts to resolve in any simplistic fashion the tensions and anxieties of her characters or the time period in question. In this work, Teng is at once master instrument maker, and master musician." —Thomas S. Mullaney, author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

The Rev. Samuel Robbins Brown (1810-1880) was in a hurry to set sail. Seven days after his marriage to Elizabeth Goodwin Bartlett, the Yale graduate and newly ordained missionary took his bride aboard the Morrison, ready to voyage halfway across the globe. The Rev. Brown was to take up a calling at the Morrison School in China, and the newlyweds had been sent off with fanfare from their hometown of East Windsor, Connecticut. They were set to sail with free passage on the Morrison, for the ship belonged to the Olyphant brothers, prominent figures in the tea trade and leading backers of the Morrison Educational Society.

It was October 17, 1838 when the Browns sailed from New York, and with favorable winds and Providence on their side they rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached Macau on February 18, 1839. Brown had to smuggle his wife secretly into the country, for foreign women were banned from landing in China.1 Once settled in Macau, Brown was placed in charge of the Morrison Memorial School, named in honor of the Rev. Robert Morrison (1782-1834), the first Protestant missionary to China. Brown viewed his mission as the training of Chinese Christians who would be enlightened through Western education but ultimately "return to their own people" and "still be Chinese."2 The energetic educator was so successful that by 1842 the school removed to larger quarters in Hong Kong. Despite the occasional stonings they had to endure from Chinese villagers, the Browns earned the devotion of their young pupils.3

When Elizabeth's failing health necessitated the family's return to the US in 1846, the Rev. Brown announced he would bring three students with him to further their studies. The first to stand up and volunteer was a Cantonese village boy named Yung Wing. With free passage on the Olyphant merchant ship Huntress, which was destined for New York with a full cargo of tea, he set sail on January 4, 1847.4

As a pupil at the Morrison School, Yung Wing (Fig. 1) had once written an English composition on the subject of "An Imaginary Voyage to New York and up the Hudson." At the time, he little dreamed that he would ever have the chance to see New York in person. Yet a mere two years later, in 1847, the imagined voyage became a reality as Yung Wing set sail for the great metropolis. In his memoir, My Life in China and America (1909), Yung pondered: "This incident leads me to the reflection that sometimes our imagination foreshadows what lies uppermost in our minds and brings possibilities within the sphere of realities."5 Such was also true, the aging Yung mused, in the case of another daydream that he had cherished during his student years -- that of one day marrying an American wife. [figref1]

Yung Wing had journeyed far from his humble roots by the time that he married Mary Louisa Kellogg (1851-1886), the daughter of a prominent New England family, in a quiet ceremony on February 24, 1875.6 As the New York Times reported:

Yung Wing Marries a Connecticut Lady

Mr. Yung Wing, of Canton, China, chief of the Chinese Educational Commission now at Hartford, was married on Wednesday to Miss Mary L. Kellogg, at the residence of her father, [Bela Crocker] Kellogg, in Avon, the ceremony being performed by Rev. J. H. Twichell, of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, a very particular friend of the bridegroom....The bride wore a dress of white crape [sic], imported expressly for this occasion from China, and elaborately trimmed with floss silk embroidery....After the ceremony, a collation was served, in which Chinese delicacies were mingled with more substantial dishes of American-style. [Chinese officials] were present in national costume, but the groom, who long since adopted our style, appeared in full evening dress....7

This highly publicized union between a Chinese official and a Mayflower descendant was like nothing ever seen before in quiet Avon, a picturesque suburb of Hartford, Connecticut. One imagines that the cross-cultural spectacle of the nuptial celebrations, presided over by a local notable like Joseph Twichell (Mark Twain's confidant) and attended by Manchu-robed Mandarins from far-off Cathay, must have caused quite a sensation. As Twichell recorded in his diary: "The presence of these Chinese gentlemen in their strange dress at a solemn religious service and social festival in a Puritan home in a Connecticut country town was a striking, and to me, exceedingly impressive feature of the occasion."8 The guests must have marveled at the lavish collation of Chinese delicacies and the bride's elaborately embroidered gown of imported Chinese silk (Fig. 2). No doubt they approved also of the groom's elegant American evening dress, his refined English, and his decision to dispose of his queue. The bridal presents, as the Times duly noted, "were numerous and costly." The story of this exotic and sumptuous wedding, virtually the first of its kind, was picked up by American newspapers across the country and would soon travel across the Pacific to China. [figref2]

If the wedding caused a stir in Avon, when news of the marriage reached China it lit sparks of indignation that would slowly grow into a heated debate among Chinese elites as growing numbers of Chinese overseas students would follow Yung Wing's suit and take foreign brides. In the end, this unconventional marriage would prove to be a source of bitter controversy for the Chinese Educational Mission in Hartford, and a contributing factor to its closing in 1881. The fulfillment of Yung Wing's youthful daydream would thus have repercussions on both sides of the Pacific.

Yung Wing has been counted among the most important figures of modern Chinese and Chinese American history, celebrated in the US and China alike as the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university (Yale, 1854), and as a founder of the Chinese Educational Mission (CEM), which sent 120 young Chinese students to the US between 1872 and 1881.9 Schools in both countries have been named in Yung Wing's honor, and matching statues memorializing the great man stand in his native place of Zhuhai, China and on the Yale campus.10 Overlooked in many of these tributes, however, is that as the first Chinese official to marry an American woman, Yung Wing was also a trailblazer on another front. The only monument testifying to this lesser-known aspect of his remarkable story is a joint tombstone in Hartford's bucolic Cedar Hill Cemetery.

Using the story of Yung Wing's marriage to Mary Kellogg as a focal point, this chapter will present a brief overview of American and Chinese discourses on Chinese-Western intermarriage as they evolved between 1850 and 1910. The aim of this chapter is simple: to refute the commonplace assumption that "intermarriage was never accepted by either side" by showing that there were, in fact, diverse opinions on Chinese-Western intermarriage in both societies: discourses of inclusion as well as exclusion. At the same time, I demonstrate that the terms in which intermarriage was debated differed significantly between the US and China. In the US, objections to intermarriage were generally framed in terms of the taboo nature of miscegenation, which was cast as a violation of natural or divine law.11 Those who supported East-West intermarriage in contrast framed it as a vehicle for assimilating immigrants (and converting them to Christianity). Chinese discourses, on the other hand, did not invoke nature or religious authority, but instead framed East-West intermarriage in Confucian terms, weighing the costs and benefits of the effects on state and society. Within such a framework, East-West intermarriage was alternatively cast as a symptom of cultural deracination and national betrayal, or as a mechanism for strengthening international relations and promoting interracial harmony.

The backdrop for these debates, as noted in the introduction, was the increasing cross-cultural contact between the US and China spurred by trade, imperial expansion, missionary activity, labor migration, and other transnational exchanges. Within such a context, would Chinese-Western intermarriage become a problem or a solution? I demonstrate that whereas there was a relative openness to such unions at the time of the Kellogg-Yung wedding in the 1870s, this tolerance would later give way to a hardening of attitudes and a tide of governmental restrictions on both sides of the Pacific.

***

Yung Wing's marriage to Mary Kellogg in 1875 represented the culmination of a long journey that began with his voyage on the Huntress in 1847. Arriving in the US, Yung studied at the Monson Academy in Massachusetts before entering Yale. While at Yale, he was naturalized as a US citizen by a New Haven judge in 1852. Entering deeply into his new American life, Yung remained concerned about China's future, and he returned to China after graduating Yale, pursuing a number of successful business ventures while attempting to promote schemes for China's modernization. When his proposal for a government-sponsored program to send students to the US was at last accepted, Yung Wing was appointed co-commissioner of the Chinese Educational Mission, establishing its headquarters in Hartford in 1872.

While the Yung-Kellogg wedding made headlines, the couple did not initially encounter any serious obstacles or ostracism. Mary's parents, Mary Golden Bartlett and Bela Crocker Kellogg, welcomed Yung into the Kellogg family and the pair became established members of Hartford society - helped, no doubt, by Yung's status as a "Mandarin" and the fortune he had amassed in China. Eleven months after the wedding, the Chinese government appointed Yung as Associate Minister from China to the US, Spain and Peru, and Mary accompanied him to Washington, DC.12

This was the 1870s, an era when attitudes toward East-West marriage were still evolving. Chinese Exclusion had not yet been passed, and Patrician Orientalism, as John Kuo Wei Tchen has termed it, still influenced American understandings of the "Celestials," especially on the East Coast, even as a mounting tide of anti-Chinese sentiment was rising from the West.13 State legislatures were just beginning to extend anti-miscegenation laws to the Chinese, a process that did not gain full momentum until the 1880s.14 On the other side of the Pacific, Chinese modernizers were looking to Western Learning as a means to strengthen China's position in the modern world, and anti-foreignism and anti-Christian sentiment had yet to reach the fever pitch of the Boxer Uprising of 1900. China had entrusted some of its brightest sons to schooling in far-off America, and in return many of the "best families" in New England had opened their homes to the boys. Signifying the hopefulness of this educational exchange, the marriage between the CEM founder and a Connecticut woman with Mayflower roots perhaps seemed symbolically fitting.

Even at this early hour, however, controversy was brewing. As Joseph Twichell, Yung Wing's pastor and close friend, confided to his diary after the wedding: "The match was a good deal commented on. Some people feel doubtful about it; some disapprove of it utterly; some (like me) gloried in it."15 Twichell's remark is revealing, for it suggests the wide range of reactions to Chinese-Western intermarriage that were still possible in American society during the 1870s - with each rooted in a particular way of thinking about race, nation, and family, and reflecting the tension between inclusive and exclusionary discourses that animated debates concerning Chinese immigration during this era. This tension emerged as defenders of the Chinese drew on discourses of equal rights, fair play and Christian universalism to argue that Chinese immigrants, like any others, could be effectively assimilated into American society, while the anti-Chinese camp conversely argued that the "Heathen Chinese" were inherently unassimilable - both culturally and biologically - and therefore must be excluded from the nation. As we will see below, conflicting discourses concerning intermarriage were informed by this fundamental tension.

Intermarriage and the Chinese Question in Nineteenth-Century America

It is not surprising that the Kellogg-Yung union would have met with disapproval, for the taboo against interracial marriage ran deep in American culture, a legacy of slavery. As Peggy Pascoe has demonstrated in her history of miscegenation law and the making of race in America, the notion that interracial marriage was "unnatural" became so taken-for-granted in the post-Civil War era that "between the 1860s and the 1960s, [majority] Americans saw their opposition to interracial marriage as a product of nature rather than a product of politics."16 Yet, as suggested in the Introduction, this understanding of interracialism, as important as it is, does not tell the whole story, for such exclusionary practices existed in tension with inclusive discourses that complicated the picture.

Early in the formation of the Republic there emerged a compelling vision of America as a place where a new "American race" was being formed from the mixing of various immigrant nationalities. Answering the question "What Is an American?" in 1782 J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur famously wrote: "They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans have arisen."17 In this idea of Americanness, intermarriage was a vehicle for immigrant assimilation and the production of a new American race.18

With the arrival of the Chinese in the mid-nineteenth century, the American public was faced with the question: could these newest immigrants, like the Dutch and the Swedes, be assimilated into American society, or were they, like the "Negroes," yet another "unamalgamable" racial group whose cultural and physical differences disrupted the homogeneity of the nation? There was in fact some initial uncertainty on this matter, which had much to do with the ambiguity, in the years before Chinese Exclusion, concerning whether Chinese should be classed as "whites" or "nonwhites." The lack of clarity on this issue meant that a few early Chinese immigrants, including Yung Wing and Wong Chin Foo, were able to naturalize as US citizens, even in the years when this right was limited to "free whites."19 Gradually, however, the Chinese were increasingly seen as "nonwhites," a status definitively confirmed when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese categorically from naturalization.20 The uncertain racial status of Chinese during the pre-Exclusion era helps to explain why discourses concerning Chinese-white intermarriage were not always uniformly negative, and displayed both inclusive and exclusionary impulses.

"Some Disapprove of It Utterly"

By the time that Yung Wing married Mary Kellogg, the issue of miscegenation had already been linked to the public debate over Chinese immigration - the so-called Chinese Question. As early as 1858, for example, a satirical cartoon on the cover of Yankee Notions magazine (Fig. 3) warned that amalgamation would be "The Result of the Immigration from China."21 The cartoon portrays an Irishwoman speaking with her Chinese husband and their three children in a mixed-up dialogue interspersed with pidgin: the "result" of immigration, it is implied, is the corruption or mongrelization of American culture -- a notion that was at once comic and threatening. As the Chinese immigrant population expanded over the next few decades, the anxiety concerning the mixing of races became increasingly pronounced, generating much public discourse on the issue. [figref3]

Drawing on prevailing fears concerning racial amalgamation, anti-Chinese agitators used the issue to mobilize support for the call to stem Chinese immigration. Demagogues linked the fear of economic competition to the notion of a sexual threat posed by Chinese men to white women. Chinese cheap labor, the argument went, undermined the white man's ability to support his family, leaving white women and girls no choice but to prostitute themselves, or to cast their lot with the Chinese. The threat of miscegenation was also a threat to the imagined racial homogeneity of the nation. David Croly and George Wakeman, the authors of an infamous inflammatory pamphlet of 1863, warned that "the opening of California to the teeming millions of east Asia" would lead to the amalgamation of Chinese and Japanese into a "composite race" that would one day supplant the Anglo-Saxon majority.22 Warning against racial amalgamation as a source of pollution, chaos, and degradation, anti-Chinese propagandists invoked the threat of miscegenation as a compelling reason to curtail Chinese immigration. Sharing these fears with readers across the Pacific, in 1870 a San Francisco correspondent to the English-language North China Herald wrote of his worries, "peering into the future," that the "masses of Eurasians, or Amerasians, that are beginning to spring" from Chinese immigrants, a "mongrel breed," would become the dominant class.23

One of the most extreme expressions of these overlapping fears was a dystopian short story, "The Battle of the Wabash," published in the Californian in 1880. Set in the future year of 2080, the story presents a nightmarish vision of a dystopian future in which Chinese immigration and miscegenation have reduced the white population to a minority, subjected to the tyrannical rule of a new Chinese/Eurasian majority.24 As William Franking Wu has demonstrated, a cluster of short stories and novels on this "Yellow Peril" miscegenation theme were published between the 1880s and the 1910s.25

Although the anti-Chinese movement was initially strongest on the West Coast, by 1882 it had gained enough national momentum for Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act. In tandem with the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment, the discourse on Chinese-white miscegenation grew increasingly negative and sensationalistic. Already as early as 1861, Nevada had passed a law prohibiting miscegenation between whites and Chinese, and by 1910, six other states in the West and South had followed suit.26

Even after the passage of Exclusion, anti-Chinese propagandists continued to link the miscegenation and immigration issues. The Asiatic Exclusion League, for example, defined its core issues as the restriction of Asian immigration, naturalization, land ownership, and intermarriage, all deemed necessary to ensure the separation of the races and prevent "the pollution of our blood by intermarriage."27 The unnatural and abhorrent character of racial intermarriage was again used to justify exclusion: "The Asiatic in America is unassimilable. He must either remain a wholly unassimilable population among us, or we must absorb him into the breed of the American people. Now this crossing of the races produces a bad hybrid."28 The separation of "Caucasians" and "Asiatics" was "required by the decree of the Father, and their amalgamation a violation of that decree."29

"Some Feel Doubtful about It"

Yet despite the prevalence of such anti-miscegenation rhetoric, which was particularly pronounced on the West Coast, depictions of Chinese-white unions were not necessarily always menacing and negative. Tchen has demonstrated, for example, that prior to the Exclusion era, New York popular culture produced a specific discourse on Chinese-Irish intermarriage, which was recognized as a growing phenomenon in the city.30 From the 1850s to the 1870s, images of these unions were common in the New York press, burlesque theater and other media -- transformed into commercialized images that were marketed nationwide (Fig 4). Most of these representations were satirical or comical, poking fun at the "mixed-up" culture of New York's lower wards. [figref4]

In fact, various newspaper reports of this era even represented Chinese husbands as fine, if "unnatural," partners for Irish and other immigrant women who occupied a low status in New York culture, claiming that the Chinese men were "good fellows" and "devoted to their wives."31 Journalists often emphasized the class hypergamy entailed for working-class women who married Chinese merchants or laundry proprietors. Although they did not go so far as to actually endorse miscegenation, these reports at least took a fairly neutral stance. An article from the New York Daily Tribune of January 1869, for example, noted: "These Chinamen have a peculiar fancy for wives of Celtic origin; we do not recollect seeing one woman among these many families that belonged to any other nationality. The great marvel is that these little domestic arrangements seldom give rise to disturbances."32 For this reporter, the interracial couple remained more a curiosity than a "problem."

In reporting on the Chinese husbands' purported devotion to their Irish or German wives, such accounts of mixed marriages additionally tended to portray intermarriage as a vehicle for the assimilation and conversion of Chinese immigrants. Indeed, the presumption that assimilation entailed taking a "native" wife was so strong that a reporter for the New York Times blasted Chinese immigrants for their failure to take the step. An article on the "Chinese in New York," published in 1873, two years before the Yung-Kellogg wedding, accused them of a singular unwillingness to "marry American wives" like immigrants of other nationalities."33 This claim was, of course, patently false as we have seen, but reveals how Chinese were stuck in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation: while demagogues used the threat of miscegenation as a reason to exclude the Chinese, others used their purported refusal to intermarry as evidence of Chinese clannishness. Either way, they were unassimilable and therefore unfit to be immigrants.

Well aware of such accusations of Chinese clannishness, decades earlier Chinese American leaders had in fact already attempted to defend the Chinese by invoking the notion of intermarriage as assimilation. In 1852, two Chinese merchant leaders from San Francisco, Hab Wa and Tong A-chick wrote an open letter on behalf of "the Chinamen in California," protesting California Governor John Bigler's proposal to exclude Chinese contract laborers. Arguing that Chinese immigrants would become good citizens if the full privileges of American law were open to them, Hab and Tong charged that the Governor was "mistaken in supposing no Chinaman has ever yet applied to be naturalized," and informed him that there "is a Chinaman now in San Francisco who is said to be a naturalized citizen, and to have a free white American wife. He wears the American dress, and is considered a man of respectability."34 Hab and Tong thus linked intermarriage with assimilation and the desire for citizenship.

Pioneering Chinese American journalist Wong Chin Foo used a similar tactic in an article he wrote on the New York Chinese for The Cosmopolitan in 1888. Reporting that many Chinese had married Irish, German, or Italian immigrant wives, Wong explained that:

Most of these women are poor working girls, who through necessity married well-to-do Chinamen. The Chinamen often make them better husbands than men of their own nation, as quite a number of them who ran away from their former husbands to marry Chinamen have openly declared. The Chinaman never beats his wife, gives her plenty to eat and wear, and generally adopts her mode of life.35

A naturalized American citizen himself, and an active advocate of equal rights for the Chinese in America, Wong Chin Foo similarly appropriated the discourse of intermarriage as assimilation to defend the Chinese immigrant's place in American society. Such examples indicate that even into the 1880s, opposition to Chinese-white intermarriage (especially where the white partner belonged to an immigrant ethnic group), was not so widespread as to trump the rhetorical power of intermarriage as a vehicle for immigrant assimilation. Class hypergamy, we will note, was key to Wong's argument that Chinese men made "better husbands."

"Some Glory in It"

The presumption that intermarriage was a vehicle for assimilation informed the thinking of those rare individuals who went beyond skeptical tolerance of Chinese-white intermarriage to argue that good would come of it. Joseph Twichell and his wife were among the notable minority who supported this position. Having long urged Yung Wing to take an American wife, the Twichells were overjoyed when he finally decided to take this novel step. As Twichell noted in his diary: "I shall await the result of the step with great interest, and with confidence that only good will come of it."36 Twichell "gloried in" this marriage as a sign of Yung Wing's transformation into an Americanized Oriental and his dedication to Christian life.

Religious liberals like Twichell acknowledged the racial difference of the Chinese, but firmly believed in the ideals of equal rights and Christian brotherhood. While no more accepting of the "Heathen Chinese" than the anti-Chinese agitators, the liberals fervently believed that the Chinese could be assimilated through missionary efforts. They argued that the drive to exclude the Chinese violated both Republican and Christian ideals, much as had slavery, and further damaged missionary efforts in China. Contrary to those who argued that God had intended to separate the races by placing them on separate continents, missionaries argued that Chinese immigrants had been brought to American shores as part of a Divine plan for their conversion and enlightenment.

Although the mainstream press on the whole stopped short of "glorying in" Yung Wing's marriage to Mary Kellogg, reports of the wedding, such as the New York Times announcement discussed above, certainly steered clear of negative sensationalism and the overt racism of Croly and Wakeman. The mainstream press instead framed this union in terms of the time-honored paradigm of intermarriage as assimilation. This is perhaps not surprising given that Yung Wing very much stood apart from most Chinese immigrants of his generation: he was a Western-educated, Christian convert, and a naturalized citizen who had discarded his queue and adopted American dress. No doubt these factors contributed to the acceptance of Yung's unconventional marriage among the Connecticut circle that included respected families like the Kelloggs, Bartletts, Twichells and Clemenses (Mark Twain) among others. Yung was no "Heathen Chinee" or "washee washee man": as newspaper reports of the time frequently emphasized, he was a "Yale man" who had "long adopted our ways."37

If Yung Wing was clearly exceptional, he was not the only one. When former CEM student Yan Phou Lee (1861-1938?, Yale Class of 1887) married Elizabeth Maude Jerome in July 1887 -- another wedding presided over by Twichell -- the press once again used the angle of intermarriage as assimilation.38 As Hartford Daily Courant headlines in no uncertain words proclaimed: "Yan Phou Lee Assimilates."39 The Courant thereby portrayed this marriage not as an unnatural act that violated sanctified racial boundaries, but in terms of the inclusive discourse - and the New York Times adopted a similar storyline.40 Like Yung, Lee enjoyed elite status as a "distinguished Chinaman," one who was highly educated and versed in the genteel manners of New England patricians - and this fact colored representations of his marriage in the East Coast press.

These wedding announcements can be read as examples of Patrician Orientalism, as described by John Kuo Wei Tchen. As Tchen has demonstrated, prior to the Exclusion era, "Patrician Orientalism" generated an abiding fascination among the American elite with Chinese luxury goods, cultural refinement, and even political ideals.41 Tchen further shows how Patrician Orientalism informed representations of Chinese immigrants in New York, producing a compelling image of the "exemplary Chinaman," as embodied by astute, literate and hard-working merchants. Patrician Orientalism thus supported a certain positive, though class-bound, stereotype of Chinese immigrants.

Patrician Orientalism similarly helps explain why the marriages of men like Yung Wing and Yan Phou Lee were eminently acceptable in some circles, suggesting the pivotal role of class status in shaping understandings of Chinese-Western intermarriage. Certainly, Yung Wing and Mary Kellogg present to us a very different image of the interracial couple than the Yankee Notions magazine cover of 1858: Yung was no Chinese peddler, but a Yale-educated Mandarin, and Kellogg was no Irish washerwoman, but a granddaughter of Avon's founding Puritan elite, a Mayflower descendant, and a Daughter of the American Revolution.

A snapshot that brings us closer to the privileged milieu in which educated Chinese immigrants like Yung and Lee were ensconced can be found in the reminiscences of Yale Professor William Lyon Phelps. Phelps was an acquaintance of Yung Wing and the Yale classmate of Yan Phou Lee, and had also attended Hartford High School with several of the CEM students. Recalling his school days, Phelps wrote of the Chinese students' prowess in sports and also on the dance floor:

When the Chinese youth entered the social arena, none of us had any chance at all. Their manner to the girls had a deferential elegance far beyond our possibilities. Whether it was the exotic pleasure of dancing with Orientals, or, what is more probable, the real charm of the manners and talk of our Eastern rivals, I do not know; certain it is that at all dances and receptions, the fairest and most sought-out belles invariably gave the swains from the Orient the preference.42

Phelps presents here a highly romanticized vision of Oriental manners and charm, of the "exotic pleasure" of dancing with Chinese "patricians," which had a potent appeal to the "fairest belles" of Connecticut society. This is not the "mixed-up" port culture of Manhattan's lower wards or San Francisco's Barbary Coast, it is the elegant rivalry among New England gentlemen on the ballroom floor, where inter-racial competition is neutralized by class privilege and the rose-colored glasses of Patrician Orientalism.

Although the influence of Patrician Orientalism in American culture was limited, offset by the increasing demonization of the Chinese surrounding the passage of Chinese Exclusion, it clearly supported a positive image of the Kellogg-Yung marriage as an "exceptional case." When press accounts continually emphasized the sumptuousness of their wedding - the luxurious bridal gown of imported Chinese silk crêpe, and the numerous expensive and exotic bridal gifts - they invoked Patrician Orientalism, casting a glow of romance and respectability over a possibly problematic union.

Patrician Orientalism even enabled some in Avon to regard this marriage connection as a point of pride. Avon's local history, included in the 1886 Memorial History of Hartford County, Connecticut, noted the famous marriage between the "distinguished Chinaman," with all his various credentials, and a "native of Avon," with her eminent pedigree.43 The compiler of this history treated the union not as a shameful secret, but as a distinct local honor. Similarly, a Kellogg family genealogy, published in 1903 and 1906, recorded the multiple accomplishments of Yung Wing, husband to Mary Louisa.44 A feather in the cap of the Kellogg clan, this Chinese marital connection was no skeleton in the family closet, but conversely given pride of place in the annals of family history.

Yet the limitations of Patrician Orientalist discourse are clearly indicated by the fact that even as some "gloried in" this match, there were others in Avon society who "disapproved utterly," Yung Wing's status notwithstanding. With race thus trumping class, it is evident that the miscegenation taboo had a strong grip on American society.

This taboo was less entrenched in Hawaii, where Yung Wing's Macao friend, Chen Fang (aka Afong), had established himself. A scholar turned merchant,

Chen Fang (1825-1906) migrated to Honolulu in 1849 and soon made his fortune. In 1857, he married Julia Hope Fayerweather (1840-1919), the daughter of American merchant Abram Henry Fayerweather (1812-1850) and a descendent of Hawaiian Chiefess Ahia (1792-1854). Although their marriage was frowned upon by some among Hawaii's white planter elite, it caused no public outcry, for intermarriage was relatively tolerated in Hawaii.45 With Afong's money and Julia's beauty and royal connections, it was not long before the pair became a leading couple in Honolulu Society. The "Afongs," as they were known, had sixteen children, including twelve daughters who would grow up to become the Belles of the Ball. Chen Fang sent two of his sons, Alung and Toney, to study in Hartford under Yung Wing's guardianship, and then at Yale. Another son attended Harvard.46

Intermarriage was quite a different phenomenon in Hawaii, for even before annexation (1898) it had been viewed as a strategy for white settlers to lay claim to native lands and to gain entry into local society, especially through unions with native Hawaiian elites.47 After annexation, intermarriage between Euro-Americans and native Hawaiians was lauded by some as a symbol for the union between the US and its new colonial territory. Others viewed amalgamation not in metaphorical terms, but as a means for cultural and biological assimilation. Missionaries like James McKinney Alexander, for example, represented interracial union as a means for the physical, intellectual, and moral improvement of the native Hawaiian race through what he called "an infusion of the best blood of the human race."48 Although such eugenic imaginings focused on the Native Hawaiian population, the Chinese -- seen as an indispensable source of labor for Hawaii's growing plantation economy - were also included in visions of the vigorous new "composite race" of Hawaii.49

As these examples demonstrate, American discourses on Chinese-white intermarriage were not always uniformly negative. Rather, there was a diversity of opinion -- especially in the years before Chinese Exclusion -- shaped by factors of class, geographic location, and gender. This diversity of opinion is significant, for despite the fact that mounting anti-Chinese demagoguery spread the idea that Chinese-white intermarriage was unnatural, the paradigm of intermarriage as assimilation would return to importance in the 1920s through the work of American sociologists, as we will see in Chapter 5.

If some of Mary Kellogg's Avon neighbors had sharply disapproved of her marriage, while others considered it a distinguishing mark of the town's local heritage, what were the reactions to this unconventional marriage in Yung Wing's homeland? Yung Wing would find out soon enough, for in 1881 he was abruptly recalled to China, forced to leave behind his young wife and their two small sons - Morrison Brown Yung, born June 10, 1876 in Avon, Connecticut, and Bartlett Golden Yung, born January 22, 1879 in Washington DC.

***

In fact, the dark clouds of suspicion had been gathering over Yung Wing in the years following his wedding, a time when he served both as co-commissioner of the CEM in Hartford and Associate Minister in Washington. Serving in this dual capacity, Yung Wing found himself caught up in a series of mounting disagreements with his conservative colleagues, Chen Lanpin and Wu Zideng, who sent a stream of correspondence back to Beijing criticizing Yung.50 In their eyes, everything that had made Yung Wing so acceptable in American society -- his conversion to Christianity, his naturalization as an American citizen, his fluent English (at the cost of his Chinese), his decision to adopt Western clothing and cut off his queue -- were symptoms of his waning loyalty to China. Arousing suspicion against Yung amongst conservatives at home, Chen and Wu railed against Yung's lenient treatment of the Chinese students, which was leading the boys, they claimed, to become Westernized, to neglect their Chinese studies, and, worst of all, to forget their love of the homeland. When Wu observed some of the Chinese boys walking home from church in the company of American women he sent an outraged report back to Viceroy Li Hongzhang calling for the immediate disbanding of the CEM. Matters were not helped when Yung Wing's own kinsman, yeah, refused to return to China when ordered home in 1880.

In the midst of these escalating conflicts, the US government refused permission for the CEM students to enter West Point and Annapolis, bringing matters to a head. In 1881, the Mission was abruptly shuttered and the boys recalled to China. Yung Wing followed shortly in their wake, returning to report to the government in the autumn of 1881. Mary did not accompany him on this journey, but retired to the family home in Connecticut, a prudent move considering both her poor health and the risks raised by the antagonism toward Yung among conservatives in China.51

Although the close friendships and burgeoning romances between some of the Chinese students and American women were not the primary reason for the disbanding of the CEM, they were certainly an aggravating factor, as recorded in the famous elegy composed in 1881 by the Chinese statesman and poet Huang Zunxian (1845-1905), to commemorate the recall:

[The students] dwell in a fantasy realm,

Where fairest belles bestow fragrant blossoms upon them.

They have found the land of perfect bliss,

And are too happy to remember Home.52

In a typical poetic move, Huang blames the fair sex for enticing the students away, leading them to forget their duties and their homeland: later events would show that the idea of such a threat was not simply a literary trope, but a deeply-held anxiety that would drive government policy.

In his memoir, Yung Wing studiously avoids any mention of his marriage in connection with the CEM recall, leaving us only to speculate on the impact of his private life on his career. To what degree did his American wife prove an issue for Yung Wing? To what degree was this only a pretext for taking down a man whose aggressive reformist stance had made him many enemies amongst conservatives at court? What was it that prompted Chinese conservatives to react with such hostility to marriages like that of Yung and those who would follow in his footsteps?

The Chinese concept of "national identity" (guojia rentong) helps us understand why international marriages like Yung's became an issue of contention during the late Qing and into the early Republican era. As the renowned "Father of Chinese Overseas Students," Yung Wing is remembered in China today as a great patriot who never forgot his love for homeland despite long years of residence abroad.53 Yet, during the late Qing, Yung Wing was conversely suspected of the unpardonable sin of "forgetting the nation" (wangguo). This transgression, more than a taboo against racial amalgamation, shaped the era's condemnation of men like Yung. The debates on Chinese-Western intermarriage were thus not simply focused on race and blood purity, but more fundamentally concerned with "national identity" and the fears of deracination, which were magnified by the rising Western dominance of the era.54

As in the US, the emerging discourses on Chinese-Western unions took shape against the backdrop of deep-rooted cultural understandings of intermarriage.55 Although some disparaged marriages between Chinese and supposedly culturally inferior "barbarians," such prejudices ebbed and flowed with the rise and fall of xenophobia in different periods of Chinese history, and intermarriage was never taboo or considered "unnatural." Indeed, intermarriage could also be perceived as having productive, and not threatening, effects for society at large. First, intermarriage had historically been used as a means of contracting political alliances. One of the most beloved stories in the Chinese historiographic tradition tells of Wang Zhaojun, a Han dynasty palace woman sent by the Chinese Emperor to marry a Xiongnu chief.56 In cosmopolitan periods of Chinese history, the story of Wang Zhaojun served to exemplify the possibilities of Chinese/non-Chinese alliances; in xenophobic periods, Wang Zhaojun's exile exemplified the principle of loyalty to China. Second, there was a long-standing view of intermarriage as a mechanism for assimilating non-Chinese frontier peoples who lived on the borderlands of the ever-expanding Chinese empire. Proponents of such a view believed that intermarriage between Han Chinese men and local women would produce a second generation of Chinese subjects, who followed Han cultural practices and were loyal to imperial authority. Some conversely feared, however, that intermarriage as assimilation might work in the opposite direction: that Han Chinese migrants to the frontiers who intermarried with indigenous women might "go native" and refuse allegiance to the Chinese state. During the Manchu-ruled Qing dynasty, the court viewed intermarriage through the lens of frontier management and ethnic politics, and in cases where intermarriage aroused conflict among communal groups, especially on strategic frontiers, the government would intervene by issuing edicts against intermarriage. Interestingly, these edicts were generally aimed not at protecting the racial integrity of the majority Han Chinese, but conversely at protecting minority groups.

Given such long-standing views of intermarriage, what was to be made of intermarriage with the Barbarians from the Far West, whose presence in China was growing over the course of the nineteenth century? In a history of marriage and the family in China, Li Mo has argued that Chinese social opinion was relatively tolerant of Chinese-Western intermarriages during the late Qing due to the fact that such unions were rare and generally involved elite Chinese men, diplomats and scholars like Yung Wing.57 With the rise of Chinese nationalism in the first decade of the twentieth century, however, hostility toward Chinese-Western intermarriage, which was perceived as a form of racial/national betrayal, increased. In particular, when Chinese female students began to go abroad in these years, racial nationalists issued heated statements against these women marrying foreign men.58

Yet, there were also circumstances in which unions between Chinese women and Western men were acceptable, particularly when such marital alliances were seen as beneficial to family or nation. The marriage of American Frederick Townsend Ward to Yang Zhangmei - a wedding that was every bit as exceptional as Yung Wing's marriage to Mary Kellogg - provides an excellent example of how a Chinese-Western union could be understood within the dual paradigms of intermarriage as alliance and intermarriage as assimilation (that is: as a step to becoming Chinese).

Intermarriage as Alliance: Securing the Foreigner to China

Frederick Townsend Ward (1831-1862) of Salem, Massachusetts was an American adventurer who became the first commander of the Ever-Victorious Army, the Western forces who joined the Qing in fighting the Taiping rebels. In reward for his services, the Qing granted Ward the honored position of fourth-rank Mandarin. Ward became a Chinese subject, and in 1862, married Yang Zhangmei, the daughter of the powerful banker Yang Fang.59 Yang Fang was a loyal backer of Ward, and saw the marriage as a means of securing his alliance with this powerful foreigner. The marriage also appeared consistent with Ward's sworn declaration that in becoming a Chinese subject he had chosen to "submit to the Chinese way of life."60 Whatever Ward's own motives, by external appearances the marriage solidified his alliance with the Yang family and confirmed his loyalty as a Chinese subject.61

Sir Robert Hart (1835-1911), the Irishman who served as China's first Inspector General of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service, provides another illustrative example of the Chinese trust in marital alliances. In 1864, when Hart was in Beijing and expecting to receive Chinese rank, a Chinese minister at the Zongli Yamen (bureau in charge of foreign affairs) suggested that he ought to marry a Chinese wife as befitting his official Qing post: the presumption being that a Chinese wife and family would strengthen the foreigner's ties to China.62 But Hart was a conventional Britisher, and when a Chinese associate offered his own daughter's hand in marriage, he steadfastly refused.63 Hart contented himself instead, in true colonial fashion, with a series of discrete Chinese mistresses, one of whom bore him three children.64

As unusual as these famous cases were, involving high-ranking men in service to the Qing court, they nonetheless serve to illustrate a mode of thinking about intermarriage as alliance that would largely be displaced by the racialized discourse of the early 20th century, as we will see in Chapter 4. These cases also demonstrate that the Qing government was not opposed outright to Chinese-Western intermarriage, especially if such alliances could serve to secure their foreign servants' allegiance. The court would gradually be persuaded, however, to take a negative view of intermarriage when it involved overseas students like Yung Wing.

The New Fashion for "International Marriage": Fears and Desires

The early scandal touched off by the Yung-Kellogg wedding in 1875 gave rise to a controversy concerning international marriage (guoji hunyin) that would intensify in China as growing numbers of overseas students and diplomatic officials married foreign wives.65 As Xing Long notes in his history of the Chinese family, in major cities like Shanghai, Canton, Hankou, Tianjin, and Beijing, mixed marriages between Chinese and foreigners grew increasingly common in the late Qing, especially among the "returned students," who had studied overseas and come home to China.66 Although the absolute numbers of such marriages remained small, by the early 20th century there were enough to draw the attention of Qing elites and to be labeled a "trend." As one writer declared:

Europeanization is gradually taking hold of the East. People vie with one another in pursuit of it. The phrase "international marriage" is especially admired by young students who have studied abroad. Observing the fashion and following suit, one after another, people have spread the practice throughout the country.67

The author of this anonymous anecdote, composed circa 1906, not only suggests the emergence of a new fashion among young students, but furthermore connects this trend to the Europeanization of Chinese culture, whether as cause or effect. What is at stake here is cultural, and not blood, purity.

Intermarriage and "Forgetting the Nation"

Indeed, conservatives who opposed the "new trend" of international marriages perceived these unions as a symptom of a larger pattern of Westernization among the overseas students, a pattern that included the pursuit of unscholarly activities like sports and dancing, not to mention the worst sin of all -- embracing Christianity. Conservatives viewed the Westernization of the students as a dangerous erosion of their Chinese identities. Articulating many of the suspicions against the CEM, an article published by the Shanghai newspaper, Shenbao, at the time of the recall in 1881, denounced:

"Some [of the boys] have cut off their queues and wear their hair unbound like barbarians; some wear the clothing of Westerners; all have abandoned their original Chinese appearance, and are becoming Americans....When they return to China, their speech, laughter, and movements are exactly the same as those of foreigners. Even when they are reunited with their families, they have forgotten them; and even if their parents are still alive, they act as though they were dead to them."68

In this passage we see fears that the "American" behavior of the CEM students would lead to deracination and unfilial conduct, a clear betrayal of the cornerstone values of Confucianism.

Hence, the emergent conservative discourse against Chinese-Western intermarriage linked the phenomenon to the broader process of deracination and the attendant threat of "forgetting the homeland," invoking the paradigm of intermarriage as treason. Such fears would have been confirmed when many of the overseas students who married foreign wives did indeed settle abroad. When the famous Chinese reformer Liang Qichao traveled to the US in 1903, he met with Yung Wing and ten former CEM students who had settled in America. Noting their talents in diverse fields from engineering to translation and banking, Liang lamented that were not put to service for China. As he wrote in his travelogue: "Every single one of them has a Western wife. This is one reason why their hearts [cherish sentiments] incompatible with patriotism. Sigh."69

In fact, as Chinese sociologist Wu Jingchao demonstrated in the 1920s, intermarriage with local women had long been an accepted practice among Chinese male migrants, virtually wherever emigrant communities were to be found.70 The practice was facilitated by the Chinese custom of polygamy, for migrants would often marry one wife in the home village and take a second wife overseas. In Southeast Asia, for example, intermarriage with local women had given rise to established creole communities by the mid-eighteenth century.71 By the late nineteenth century, as mass migration effected the global spread of Chinese migrants, intermarriage could be observed in overseas communities everywhere from the Americas, to the Caribbean, Hawaii, and Australasia. Polygamy meant that intermarriage did not threaten the traditional family structure and represented instead a form of accommodation to migrant life.72

But what if migrants rejected polygamy or settled permanently abroad? In such situations, intermarriage was no longer a form of accommodation, but signaled a break with established custom. Anxieties concerning such issues would in time erupt into a heated debate concerning international marriage, specifically targeting overseas students, as will be explored in the next chapter.

Interracialism as Foreign Penetration

The idea of intermarriage as cultural treason came to the fore with the rise of Chinese nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century. Anti-foreignism in China had been mounting since the Treaty of Nanking, and became increasingly linked to anti-Christian sentiment after the Peking Treaties of 1860 opened the Chinese interior to missionary work.73 Anti-Christian riots and spontaneous attacks on missionaries gradually gained momentum, culminating in the infamous Boxer Uprising of 1900. As in the US, the perceived cultural threat from the outsiders was often expressed in sexual logic. In anti-Christian rhetoric, for example, we find accusations of rape, child molestation, and sexual perversions practiced by the "foreign devil" missionaries.

Similar rhetoric is evident in the famous polemical tract Alarm Bells (Jingshizhong), composed in the wake of the Boxers. Warning against Western imperialism and denouncing the Qing failure to deal with this threat, the revolutionary pamphlet stridently declared: "our wealth and possessions, the fruits of our bitter toil -- all will be seized by the Westerner; our countrymen's cherished wives and children...none will be spared his sword or his lust."74 Mirroring in some regards the tactics of the anti-Chinese movement in the US, the tract invokes a threat to the nation's women to mobilize the public against foreign encroachment.

Although the anxieties on both sides of the Pacific demonstrate a certain degree of parallelism, they must be understood within the context of the "global unevenness" of the era. In other words, in China, fears of Western cultural and economic encroachment were confirmed by the gun boats, unequal treaties, and other concrete evidences of Western imperialism.

Intermarriage as International Relations

While polemical tracts like Alarm Bells sought to mobilize radicals by appealing to a visceral xenophobia, anti-foreignism was not the only response to the crisis provoked by Western imperialism in China.75 In fact, certain forward-looking intellectuals who sought harmonious, cooperative relations with the West actually advocated Chinese-Western unions as a means to improve mutual understanding and international relations. Such was the position taken by the celebrated diplomat, Wu Tingfang (1842-1922), for example, as we will see in the next chapter. Similarly, the radical Yi Nai published an article in the reformist newspaper Hunan News in 1898, proposing intermarriage as a long-term strategy to ensure peace between China and the West. Yi Nai argued that intermarriage would promote international relations through the establishment of kinship ties, and even proposed that an imperial order be sent down encouraging the populace to marry their sons and daughters to Westerners. With marital alliances forged between China and Western nations, he argued, China could recruit talented foreigners to serve as advisers and officials, with the assurance that they would work for China's benefit. In this manner, interracial unions could ultimately save China from Western imperialism, and save the Chinese race from extinction.76 Yi thus proposed a strategy of "employing racial amalgamation as a means of extending the noble race."77

Anticipating resistance from those who held sacred the notions of racial and lineage purity, Yi conceded many feared that "if the people of this ancient empire, the noble descendants of the Yellow Emperor, marry with those who are not of our race, then it will lead to the decline of the pure descendants of the noble race and the flourishing of the stinking races."78 This type of xenophobic and racialist thinking was known to take hold during historical moments when China faced foreign invasion. Indeed, the notion of intermarriage as treason, or a pollution of the sacred race and lineage, assumed heightened importance during the anti-Manchu revolutionary movement of the early 20th century, leading to the emergence of a new racialized discourse on intermarriage, as we will see in Chapter 4.

In sum, as in the US, a range of discourses existed in China during this era. In response to a perceived imperative for national survival in the face of Western imperial aggression, Chinese intellectuals represented Chinese-Western intermarriage alternately as problem or solution: as a threat to the nation or the very means of its salvation. If the American rhetoric had become increasingly negative during the era of Chinese Exclusion, in China hostility to Chinese-Western intermarriage rose with the surging tide of anti-foreignism in the years leading up to the Republican Revolution of 1911, as we will see in the next chapter.

***

Casting about in China after the recall, Yung Wing received word that his wife's health had taken a turn for the worse. He immediately set sail for America, reaching home in 1883. Her spirits lifted by this reunion, Mary appeared to recover, but the respite was only temporary. Mary Kellogg Yung died in 1886, at the tender age of 35, leaving behind a grief-stricken husband and her two young sons. Yung Wing found his "devoted sons" his only solace in the "great void" that he faced after burying his beloved wife, described in her obituary as a "New England woman of the true type," at Cedar Hill.79 As Yung wrote in his memoir:

She did not leave me hopelessly deserted and alone; she left me two sons who are constant reminders of her beautiful life and character. They have proved to be my greatest comfort and solace in my declining years. They are most faithful, thoughtful and affectionate sons, and I am proud of their manly and earnest Christian character. My gratitude to God for blessing me with two such sons will forever rise to heaven, an endless incense.80

1 See Carl T. Smith, Chinese Christians: Élites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985). 2 Samuel R Brown, Chinese Repository, vol. X (1841) 583; quoted in Smith, Chinese Christians, 14. 3 See William Elliot Griffis, A Maker of the New Orient. Samuel Robbins Brown, Pioneer Educator in China, America, and Japan: the Story of His Life and Work, (New York: F.H. Revell, 1902). 4 See Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1909). 5 Yung Wing, My Life in China and America, 23. Yung's memoir has been translated into Chinese numerous times since 1915. 6 Mary was the granddaughter of the eminent Rev. Bela Kellogg and Rev. John Bartlett. 7 The New York Times (February 24, 1875). 8 Joseph Hopkins Twichell, Journal, volume 1, February 24, 1875, 60, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 9 For more on Yung Wing and the CEM, see Edward JM Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the World: The Chinese Educational Mission to the United States, 1872-81 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), Thomas E LaFargue, China's First Hundred: Educational Mission Students in the United States, 1872-1881 (Pullman, WA: State College of Washington, 1942), and the CEM Connections website, http://www.cemconnections.org. On Yung Wing's view of America, see K. Scott Wong, "The Transformation of Culture: Three Chinese Views of America," American Quarterly 48.2 (1996), 201-232. 10 On the recent efforts to commemorate Yung Wing, see "Zhuhai Carries Spirit of Yung Wing," Zhuhai Daily News (November 22, 2010) <http://deltabridges.com/news/zhuhai-news/zhuhai-carries-spirit-yung-wing>. 11 See Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally. 12 Yung's appointment came on December 11, 1876. 13 Tchen, New York Before Chinatown. 14 Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 85-94. 15 Twichell, Journal, volume 1, February 24, 1875, 59. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 16 Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 1. 17 J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (New York: Duffield, 1782, 1908 reprint), 51. 18 Such an inclusive vision was for the most part implicitly limited to immigrants from western and northern Europe. 19 Revised naturalization statutes of 1870 were worded to "apply to aliens, being free white persons, and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent." 20 Chinese were first ruled ineligible for naturalized citizenship in 1878. 21 See Yankee Notions, March 1858. 22 David G. Croly, Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro (New York: H. Dexter, Hamilton & co., 1864), 19. US 10703.17, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 23 North China Herald, January 18, 1870, 49. 24 Lorelle, "The Battle of the Wabash: A Letter from the Invisible Police," Californian 2 (October 1880), 364-376. 25 William Franking Wu, The Yellow Peril: Chinese-Americans in American Fiction, 1850-1940 (Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1982). 26 By 1910, anti-miscegenation statutes affecting Chinese had been passed by Arizona, California, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah. Between 1910 and 1950, Wyoming, South Dakota, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, and Virginia added such statutes. See Hrishi Karthikeyan and Gabriel Chin, "Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and the Application of Anti-Miscegenation Statutes to Asian Americans, 1910-1950." Asian Law Journal 9.1 (May 2002) and Pascoe, What Comes Naturally. 27Asiatic Exclusion League, "Proceedings of the Asiatic Exclusion League, San Francisco" (San Francisco: Asiatic Exclusion League, October 1910), 64, Collection Development Department, Widener Library, Harvard University. 28Asiatic Exclusion League, "Proceedings of the Asiatic Exclusion League, San Francisco" (San Francisco: Asiatic Exclusion League, April 1908), 19, Collection Development Department, Widener Library, Harvard University. 29Asiatic Exclusion League, "Proceedings of the Asiatic Exclusion League, San Francisco," (April 1908), 23. 30 See Tchen, New York before Chinatown. 31 See New York Sun (February 16, 1874) and Tchen, New York before Chinatown, 299. 32 "The Chinese," New York Daily Tribune (January 1869). 33 The New York Times (December 26, 1873). 34 This is probably a reference to Norman Asing. Hab Wa and Tong Achick, "Letter of the Chinamen to his Excellency Gov. Bigler," reprinted in the New York Times (June 5, 1852). 35 Wong Chin Foo, "The Chinese in New York," Cosmopolitan 5 (March-October, 1888), 297-311. 36 Journal of Joseph Hopkins Twichell, February 24, 1875, 60. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 37 See "Yung Wing a Yale Man," The New York Times (August 5, 1898). 38 On Lee, see Amy Ling, "Yan Phou Lee on the Asian American Frontier," in Re/Collecting Early Asian America. eds. Josephine Imogene L. Lim and Yuko Matsukawa Lee, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 273-87. 39 Hartford Daily Courant, July 7, 1887, 2 40 New York Times, July 7, 1887, 1. 41 See Tchen, New York before Chinatown. 42 William Lyons Phelps, "Chinese Students in America," The Chinese Students Monthly 6.8 (June 10, 1911), 705-9. 43 See J. H. Trumbull, The Memorial History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884 (Boston: E.L. Osgood, 1886). 44 See Timothy Hopkins, The Kelloggs in the Old World and the New (San Francisco, Calif: Sunset Press and Photo Engraving Co, 1903). 45 Hawaiian society remained relatively tolerant of intermarriage, and by the 1920s American sociologists were portraying the island as a paradise of racial fusion. 46 On Chen Fang, see Bob Dye, Merchant Prince of the Sandalwood Mountains: Afong and the Chinese in Hawaii (Honolulu. Hawaii: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997). 47 John Chock Rosa, "'The Coming of the Neo-Hawaiian American Race': Nationalism and Metaphors of the Melting Pot in Popular Accounts of Mixed-Race Individuals," in Sum of Our Parts: Mixed Heritage Asian Americans, eds.Teresa Williams-Leon and Cynthia Nakashima (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 49-56. 48 See James McKinney Alexander, The Islands of the Pacific: From the Old to the New (American Tract Society, 1895). 49 Caspar Whitney, "The Passing of the Native Hawaiian," Harper's Weekly, condensed for Public Opinion (April 27, 1899), 535. 50 Wang Yanwei ed., Qingji waijiao shiliao, vol. 1 (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1963), 300-302. 51 See Yung, My Life. 52 Huang Zunxian, "Ba Meiguo liuxuesheng ganfu," (An Elegy on the Overseas Students Recalled from America), 1881, collected in Huang Zunxian, Renjinglu shicao jianzhu (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1981), 310. 53 <Zhuhai.gov.cn/xxfw/zzjg/szsydw/sbwg/ronghong/gyrh/rhsp> 54 See Emma Jinhua Teng, "Wangguo? Ruguoji? Guoji Hunyin, Guojia Rentong Yu Wenhua Huiliu: Qingmuo Minchu De Zhongxi Lianyin Wenti," in Qingdai zhengzhi yu guojia rentong, Liu Fengyun, Dong Jianzhong, and Liu Wenpeng, eds. (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian, 2012), 665-675. 55 See Xu Ke, Qingbai leichao (A Classified Compendium of Qing Anecdotes) (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1928). 56 This motif of loyal sacrifice appeared in the famous late-Qing political novel, Flowers in a Sea of Sin (Niehaihua, 1905), the story of Sai Jinhua, who purportedly saved China by sleeping with the Commander-in-chief of the foreign armies during the Boxer Incident. 57 See Li Mo, Bainian jiating bianqian (Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 2000). 58 See Weili Ye, Seeking Modernity in China's Name: Chinese Students in the United States, 1900-1927 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 59 Caleb Carr, The Devil Soldier: The Story of Frederick Townsend Ward (New York: Random House, 1992), 212. 60 Carr, The Devil Soldier, 203. 61 A second famous example was Sir Halliday Macartney (1833-1906), a Scottish medical doctor who entered the Chinese service and also joined the Ever-Victorious Army. Macartney married a Chinese lady in Suzhou in 1864. It was said that this union raised Macartney's status among the Chinese, who granted him many distinctions during his lifetime. Demetrius Charles de Kavanagh Boulger, The Life of Sir Halliday MacArtney, KCMG: Commander of Li Hung Chang's Trained Force in the Taeping Rebellion, Founder of the First Chinese Arsenals, for 30 Years Councillor and Secretary to the Chinese Legation in London (London: J. Lane company, 1908), 140. 62 Richard J. Smith, John K. Fairbank, Katherine F. Bruner, eds. Entering China's Service: Robert Hart's Journals, 1854-1863 (Cambridge, MA, London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1986), 128. 63 See Smith et al., Entering China's Service (1986), 128, 218, and Richard J. Smith, John K. Fairbank, Katherine F. Bruner, eds. Robert Hart and China's Early Modernization: His Journals, 1863-1866 (Cambridge, MA, London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991). 64 Hart's mistress Ayaou bore him three children between 1858 and 1865 - all of whom were later sent back to England for education as Hart's "wards." Smith et al., Entering China's Service (1986), 193. 65 See Lin Zixun, Zhongguo liuxue jiaoyu shi: yibasiqi zhi yijiuqiwu (Taipei: Huagang chuban, 1976), Wang Huanchen, Liuxue jiaoyu: Zhongguo liuxue jiaoyu shiliao (Taipei: Guoli bianyiguan, 1980), and Shu Xincheng, Jindai Zhongguo liuxue shi (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1989). 66 Xing, "Qingmo minchu hunyin," 168-83. 67 Xu, Qingbai leichao, 165. 68 Shen Bao, (September, 22, 1881). 69 Liang Qichao, "Xindalu youji jielu" (Selected Memoir of Travels in the New World) in Yinbingshi wenji (Collected Writings From an Ice-drinker's Studio) (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1926), j 38, 34b. Liang estimated that about one in twenty Chinese men in the mainland US had married an American wife, and even more in Hawaii. Liang Qichao, "Xindalu youji," j 39, 5a. 70 See Jingchao Wu, Chinese Immigration in The Pacific Area. Thesis (M.A.), University of Chicago, 1926. 71 Kuhn, Chinese Among Others, 70-71. 72 Many overseas students came to view marriage with a Western woman as a definitive break with outmoded traditions, including arranged marriage, polygamy, and extended family. See Zou Taofen, Yiyu xiantan (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 2000). 73 Jerome Chen, China and the West: Society and Culture, 1815-1937 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), 140. 74 Chen Tianhua, "Alarm Bells," Ian Chapman trans., Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine 53 & 54 (2000): 240. The tract was originally published in 1905. 75 An early writer on this theme was a close acquaintance of Yung Wing, pioneering journalist Wang Tao (1828-1897). 76 See Yi Nai, "Zhongguo yi yiruo weiqiang shuo" ("China Should Take Its Weakness for Strength") Xiangbao leicuan (Classified Compilation of Articles From the Xiangbao) 1 (Taipei: Taiwan datong shuju, 1968), 18-24 77 Yi, "Zhongguo," 6a. 78 Yi, "Zhongguo," 23. 79 "The Funeral of Mrs. Yung Wing," Hartford Daily Courant, June 1, 1886, 2. 80 Yung, My Life, 222-223. For a glimpse into Mary's last days, see her letter to her mother dated March 20, 1886. Yung Wing Papers (MS 602), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.